This morning (London-time), sanity made a comeback, and the British health authorities ruled that a feverish, nearly non-conscious nurse could not (even if we were to affirmatively discredit all the eye-witness accounts) have formed the requisite mental state to “dishonestly deceive” UK health authorities (who themselves admit — they did not follow their own procedures, in deciding to allow her to travel onward, with what turned out to be an Ebola-related fever).

. . . .Pauline Cafferkey has been cleared of professional misconduct by a panel at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in Edinburgh following an investigation into her return to the UK after contracting the Ebola virus.

The panel ruled that Cafferkey’s judgment had been so compromised by her developing illness that she could not be held responsible. . . concluding: “In your diminished medical state you were swept along by events.”

Describing Cafferkey as an experienced nurse, the panel concluded she would not have acted against her training unless her judgment had been seriously impaired.

“There was no evidence that you set out to mislead Public Health England by allowing an incorrect temperature to be recorded,” the ruling said. . . .

One would hope that this finding will clear the path to her now long delayed receipt of that £4,000 she is owed — for having volunteered, and heroically-so, in Sierra Leone. Smiling, but slightly puzzled here (over overnight developments), in the city of big shoulders, as I prepare to walk in under cloud dappled skies. . . Onward!